IPCom plans to stop HTC sales in Germany

German patent outfit IPCom plans to halt as quickly as possible the sale of all HTC smartphones in Germany.

IPCom will enforce an injunction based on a Mannheim court decision from February 2009 after HTC, the fourth largest smartphone vendor globally, withdrew its appeal. The outfit said that it now intends to execute this injunction in the shortest possible time," the company said in a statement. It will mean that HTC devices will not be in the shops for Christmas, the company said.

HTC confirmed it pulled the appeal on Friday and said it thought it was redundant as a German patent court has questioned the validity of the patent in question. By not appealing HTC has time to battle against two other patents which could have been decided upon next week, while it can still try to delay the original injunction. German patent expert and blogger Florian Mueller said that while HTC can try to oppose the enforcement of the injunction, my research shows that the odds are very long against HTC on this one.

IPCom has battled for years against HTC and Nokia in European courts and any ban of sales will really damage the outfit at a time when its sales are falling. IPCom bought Bosch's mobile telephony patent portfolio, created between the mid-1980s and 2000, which includes about 160 patent families worldwide, including some of the key patents in the wireless industry, such as patent 100, which standardises a cellphone's first connection to a network.